About Me

I’m 24 going on 50, engaged and staring uphill, all the while glancing left to right hoping to find people at my level.  The ones that look down and want nothing more than to plant their foot on the next step so that they can build an elevator to the step below.

Seven months ago I was liberated, as word I use loosely, from my job in the private start-up sector of the booming Boston innovation wonderland.  I had a month’s rent taken care of and two year experience working with some of the brightest minds in both the marketing and tech industries.  Hell one of them went on to build OneForty.com (shameless name drop).  So I went home and threw my design portfolio into the windmill and discovered a gaping hole in my logic.  Why chase after these design desk jobs where I take assignments and basically create for both a middle man – that makes 80% of the true fruits of my labor – and the client?  When I could just do it all on my own.

That was revelation #1.

So I set out to play the freelance field and ended up in a good situation with a marketing agency in Boston where I functioned as a UI consultant.  This was cool until I realized that I couldn’t actually write the code I was designing for.  This is a mega road block when you want to truly harness the capabilities of the web.  So I bowed out and headed into a dungeon for a month where I have emerged a tried and true web designer.

Revelation #2.

It still astonishes me how easy it was to float by for two years and only focus on design.  Sure my Photoshop skills turned to gold, but I already had the design part down.  Yet I was surrounded by programmers that could literally take the “wouldn’t it be awesome if the nav could do X” sticky notes on my designs and turn them into something palpable.  In the presence of the alchemist I was a dumbstruck onlooker.   Luckily, much like being in the presence of a great book, the sheer energy of innovative spirit I was exposed to for two long years actually sunk in.

I guess it’s true that sometimes you need to get hit by a bus in order to stop sleepwalking through life.

That warm day in July I felt like I had just finished my last day of high school and was headed for summer vacation.  Even though I had graduated from college years ago, I was finally placed in that self-discovery mode that every living being needs to experience.  I know I wasn’t alone either, with so many people out of work, and many more willingly pulling out of the rat race, I can feel it in the air – our economy is changing.  The days of Office Space will soon be in the rear view mirror as more of us realize that knowledge of ALL things is vital to our individual prosperity and the common growth of society.  My contribution?  Taking what I do well – art/design – and applying it to the real world.  Using the innate ability to drive consciousness visually by helping like minded people and entrepreneurs grab this economy and create something new.